Medium Armor - Why it's Bad & How to Fix it

The_Brosteen

I agree with everything except the speed cap. Theres no reason to increase it, all you would do is make swift jewlery the new widespread cool thing to do and then everyone would complain about it and the speed cap would eventually be nerfed down to 150%. So lets just skip that whole song and dance and just leave it lol.

IAVITNI

DDuke wrote: »

SilverWF wrote: »

Shuffle is not weapon skill, even mag builds can use it.
That's why it has greatly reduced buff time.

While Momentum is 2h skill, that can be used only with 2h. Well, said it like there is stam builds without 2h on one of the bars, lol.

Shuffle is an armor skill that can only be used with 5 pieces of medium armor slotted. Do you run medium armor on your magicka builds?

Yes. You don't?

DDuke wrote: »

I don't think homogenizing the armor types is the solution here. If anything medium & heavy should be further apart from each other in terms of playstyle.

Currently the only way you can tell someone is using medium (and not heavy) is the amount of damage they take and whether they have Shuffle visual effect on.

How overpowered Forward Momentum is compared to Shuffle plays a large part in that, same as there being a speed cap (meaning every good heavy & medium build runs at the same speed in the end).

Never said homogenize the armor types. I'm assuming that you inferred that from the impen suggestion. The impen wouldn't be a lot, just enough so that medium builds don't get instagibbed. Even with avoidance being the primary defensive mechanism of medium, passive mitigation is just short of where it needs to be. Only looking for 300-500 impen tbh. Your suggestion of changing immunity durations arguably results in greater homogenization since both skills would behave like buffs in the way you have to manage them. Right now Momentum is proactive while Shuffle is reactive. Personally I think it should stay that way.

And it's a bit of an overstatement to claim that incoming damage and visual effects is the only indication a player is running medium. The playstyle is noticeably different--more dodge rolls and reliance on LoS. Even if this wasn't the case, by that logic we should buff light armor because the only indication is that they use damage shields and take more damage and heavy armor would require the biggest buff because the only indication is that they receive less damage.

Forward Momentum isn't overpowered. The skill hasn't changed in a while, at least I can't recall if it has. Maybe the duration was increased but I don't use the skill so I don't care enough. What is overpowered is the current snare meta where every other primary spammable applies a snare. ZoS has identified this as an issue and will address it next patch". That said, there is likely no need to nerf Forward Momentum because nerfing snares will greatly devalue FM (since you are trading virtually the only burst heal for stamina classes) and increase the value of Shuffle indirectly. Back in the Black Rose days, that 0.5 snare immunity from a single piece of medium was enough. Realistically, the only changes to the skills should be costs, with Shuffle decreasing and Momentum increasing slightly. Even then, no change should be done to anything regarding snares without knowing how snares will change "next patch". Actually, I'd say reduce Shuffle costs regardless.

Of your suggestions, the movement speed change would have the biggest impact. Right now medium is adequate in BGs and Cyrodil. The only place medium severely under performs is in duels, where movement speed would make a significant difference as it would allow medium users to "LoS" or targeting cheese more efficiently.

_Ahala_

@DDuke Excellent suggestions here... I really hope Zos takes these into consideration

xiZeroPointix

Medium really only pertains to one class...stam nb. The skill tree has passives that are really only useful for stealth, sneak and roll dodge. Your typical brawler type of dd is better off in heavy do to the healing taken and damage mitigation. Medium should offer small resistance bonus and physical penetration which is what medium stamina builds sort of lack. With light armor you get way better damage stats (5k spell pen ahem) and some decent mitigation. Medium should offer much of the same. I agree that movement speed and roll dodge are important mitigation factors. But sneak boni and such needs looked at. Just my opinion as every other class has less benefit from most of the medium armor passives.

Undefwun

Slow Heavy down? Give it a speed de-buff (3%/piece) the more you wear? Don't have to change FM that way... They won't be snared.. but they won't catch mediums either.

I also agree making the speed bonus on medium NOT sprint based, but just movement speed.

When I made my stam sorc I wanted.. fast, hard to pin down... killing by the death of a thousand cuts... got pushed into a heavy armor build that needs to heavy attack... cos In medium against good players it was quite tough.
I had a bleeds/defile build with Cyro's Crest and Bone Pirate, but they changed the set on me...

Also what's the point of fast when everything just glues you to the ground.. guess you gotta go so fast that ppl can't target you...

Ragnarock41

Ragnaroek93 wrote: »

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I'd like to see how you are able to kill a heavy armor build running around with speedcap or a shieldstacker with your magden (or actually any decent player on whatever build). Somehow it's fine that nobody can finish a "good" opponent (since years) unless it's a rollbased build.
There is no reason to slot medium armor and/or a bow, every class does better in heavy armor with speedpots and swift at this point. Even stamblade does worse in open world than it does on a proper heavy armor build, which is by far less vulnerable against CC + burst and against AoE damage in group fights.

Stop coming up with magden all the time, everybody agrees that the class needs help for solo open world in general, the class has no kill potential against anything. Other than that I don't see how magden is underperforming, in a group and in bgs it's pretty solid and we can probably agree that it's not the job of a magden to chase down and kill mobility builds which would justify a direct counter against them.

What I would suggest for medium armor: Nerfing speedpots (unpopular opinion... I know), nerfing Cloak and giving med armor and bow builds a bit more survivability (and a good spammable for classes which aren't nb or temp).

Give my stamDk pre morrowind battle roar-helping hands and you can have your speed pot nerf. Right now speed pots are crutch for the class medium or heavy does not matter.

That being said I understand why you want this nerf and I agree. But Im afraid it would make magicka way too dominant in general(like why play sDk over mDk if both are slow as heck) as mobility and quick burst is all stam has over magicka.

acw37162

Medium Armor Passible need something added to it, what that something is I don’t know exactly.

Shuffle needs a distinct and useful PVP morph and PVE morph.

The root snare immunity of shuffle vs forward momentum is a joke considering the cost.

Maybe, off the cuff, there should be a unique movement speed effect or bonus to a morph of shuffle. (PVE Morph)

And a parry version that gives you a damage bonus if activated gives you a 1 - 1.5 second window to stun or turn an attack

mr_wazzabi

I agree with flat movement speed passive not tied to sprinting.

They should also remove the stealth passive and replace with something else as only stamblade benefits from that passive, as well as stealth being useless in endgame pve. Maybe replace stealth passive with aoe damage reduction.

keeno9881

lol i kinda want them to buff the damage more on medium armor you see everyone is wearing fury sevth or rav it makes them tankier and give them higher damage.You can pull high damage on medium armor build but i dont think its as high when your using that double proc setup. I hate how everyone was just like hvy hvy hvy .Hvy should have some flaws medium got to have flaws and light as well.But if you want to dps stam medium armor should be the way to do it and to get people off this hvy meta so im all for buffing the damage on medium to the point to get tanks back into hvy and dps back to medium.Not to overpower it but make a difference maybe work on weapon and spell pen again i dont know really but also light armor has its own problems as well but we work out the shield problems i main as sorc but i love all the classes and i want all a buff that need it.

leepalmer95

xiZeroPointix wrote: »

Medium really only pertains to one class...stam nb. The skill tree has passives that are really only useful for stealth, sneak and roll dodge. Your typical brawler type of dd is better off in heavy do to the healing taken and damage mitigation. Medium should offer small resistance bonus and physical penetration which is what medium stamina builds sort of lack. With light armor you get way better damage stats (5k spell pen ahem) and some decent mitigation. Medium should offer much of the same. I agree that movement speed and roll dodge are important mitigation factors. But sneak boni and such needs looked at. Just my opinion as every other class has less benefit from most of the medium armor passives.

Ive been running it on my stamplar just fine. It's not as good a heavy and likely will never be but its a nice change.

leepalmer95

Yeah i agree.

Shuffle needs to be cheaper and give more snare immunity, maybe 5s flat immunity and 0.5s per medium.

Maybe change the movement speed to a flat one instead of sprint, yes. Things like minor expedition and orc sprint speed have become a bit useless with the introduction of swift. Its too easy to hit the cap and it better to have 2x swift for base movement than it is to have sprint speed increase.

Do something about the sneak passive which is a useless passive, change it into something else? 120 crit resist per medium piece? Won't break pvp or effect pve but it's a nice little change to make up for 15% dodge chance loss which is quite a major defence nerf.


I do think minor evasion should be 10% aoe dmg reduction and major should be 25% still but shuffle should give minor evasion over major if they introduce other things such as the crit resist.

The goal should be to remove dodge chance while keeping it around the same or slightly increase medium's defences, yet they shouldn't indirectly make classes like templar weaker with tying snare immunity to a skill which gives 25% aoe reduction.

Ways the improve medium defence:

Mobility, - Shuffle gets reduced cost and increased immunity to 8s yet gets minor evasion which is decreased to 10%.

Sneak passive gets changed too something like 120 crit resist per medium piece, slight defence buff in pvp, doesn't effect pve.

Change speed of medium to a flat speed buff, but don't straight up change it too a 3% movement speed per medium, change it to either 2% movement, 1% sprint per medium or the other way around. Medium builds should be definition be the most mobile, they are squishy in return to mobility and dmg.

I think all these changes together would go a long way for helping medium.

Thoughts?

DDuke

Based on the latest comments from ZOS we might be seeing some nerfs to Swift and Forward Momentum in the near future.

Would be nice if medium could keep some of the fast paced playstyle however, so I'd still like to see it give flat movement speed rather than sprint speed.


That+Swift nerf+FM nerf should be enough to balance the armor types in my opinion, while it'd also give medium more identity now that it is losing the passive dodge chance in Murkmire update.

leepalmer95

DDuke wrote: »

Based on the latest comments from ZOS we might be seeing some nerfs to Swift and Forward Momentum in the near future.

Would be nice if medium could keep some of the fast paced playstyle however, so I'd still like to see it give flat movement speed rather than sprint speed.


That+Swift nerf+FM nerf should be enough to balance the armor types in my opinion, while it'd also give medium more identity now that it is losing the passive dodge chance in Murkmire update.

I'd rather not have mobility just straight up nerfed on heavy but i'd like it buffed on medium so its at least comparable.

Maybe nerf FM to 6s or something sure. But i'd like some window to not be snared and actually go on offence.